1. ISRAELI AIR FORCE HITS MORE TARGETS IN GAZA… The Israeli Air Force kept up the pressure on Palestinian terrorist groups with a series of airborne attacks in the Gaza Strip early Tuesday morning. Israeli sources report that several access roads from which Qassam rockets have been launched at Israel were bombed and a bridge near the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun was destroyed. An office of the Fatah faction was hit by a missile in Khan Younis, as was a money-changer’s store. The Israelis claim the money-changer is a Hamas front belonging to a man they arrested last July whom they allege funnels massive amounts of money to Hamas.
2. LIKUD CENTRAL COMMITTEE BACKS SHARON BY NARROW MARGIN… Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon narrowly defeated his opponents in a vote that had come to be viewed as a referendum on his leadership. The Central Committee of Sharon’s Likud party was voting on whether to advance primary elections to November or allow them to remain slated for April as the party constitution sets forth. Those seeking to accelerate the process – led by former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu — lost by only 104 of the 2,762 votes cast. Sharon had threatened to leave the party and establish a new one from which to seek a return to the prime ministership if he had lost. Netanyahu conceded his loss and said he would challenge Sharon in the April primary. Sharon, through a spokesman, said that the vote puts an end to what he called the “rebellion” and warned his political foes to toe the party line “unconditionally.”
3. U.S. ADMINISTRATION REITERATES SUPPORT FOR ISRAELI MILITARY ACTION… Expanding upon U.S. Ambassador Robert Jones’s statement expressing “understanding” of Israel’s position vis-à-vis its military campaign in the Gaza Strip, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack on Monday reiterated the American position and underscored Hamas’s standing as a terrorist organization. McCormack pointed out to reporters that additional rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza occurred after the Hamas announcement that rocket launchings would cease. Speaking for the administration, McCormack said, “We understand the situation in which Israel finds itself and we fully understand Israel’s right to defend itself.”
4. ISRAEL’S LABOR PARTY HOLDS TALKS WITH FATAH… Israel’s leading opposition party, Labor, is holding talks with Fatah, the leading Palestinian faction. Two days of meetings are being held in Stockholm beginning on Tuesday under the aegis of the Swedish Social Democrats, the nation’s ruling party. The announced agenda is the future of the Gaza Strip after Israel’s unilateral pullout. Unofficial talks of this nature have been held frequently since the onset of the Oslo process in the early 1990s. While the Israeli side is comprised of opposition politicians, the Palestinian delegation is headed by Nabil Sha’ath, a deputy prime minister in the Palestinian Authority.
5. ISRAELI ARABS IN HUNGER STRIKE OVER RIOTS IN 2000 … The Arab Higher Monitoring Committee, an oversight group of Israeli Arabs, has begun a hunger strike outside Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Jerusalem office in protest of a Justice Ministry decision not to prosecute police officers in the case of riots in the year 2000 in which 13 Arabs died in the course of a riot by Israeli Arabs. The protest will last at least three days and nights. An independent commission reviewing events of October 2000 found cause for two indictments of police. The Committee is demanding that the Justice Ministry report be annulled and the Or Commission report be acted upon.